“Time and again, racist ideas have not been cooked up from the boiling pot of ignorance and hate. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era’s racial disparities away from those policies and onto Black people. ”
― Ibram X. Kendi
Equity Challenge Politics and Race
In continuing to highlight the presence of racism in our societal structures, today we’ll be looking into the political system, and analyzing how race can impact the political spectrum, as well as analyzing prominent topics where race and politics intersect. Views of discrimination vary widely by race, ethnicity and partisan lines. Data lovers can dive deeper into shifts in public opinion on the role of government in a variety of differnt policy areas with data from the General Social Survey.
Key Terms:
Racial Resentment: A way to measure white Americans’ attitudes toward Black Americans based on respondents’ answers to questions about perceptions about disparities. This metric is more a measure of worldview than a measurement of personal racism.
Articles
The Role of Racial Resentment in Our Politics
- Ian Shapiro from The Brennan Center for Justice examined levels of racial resentment amonth white Republicans and white Democrats going back to 1986. Read this article to learn whats changed in the last 30 years and why that gap has increased so drastically.
DEI Legislastion, Academic Freedom and Free Expression: Where to Go From Here?
- The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Academic Leaders Task Force argues that it is possible for college administrators to harmonize DEI, academic freedom, and free expression read more about it here.
Video
Racism has a cost for everyone (14 minutes)
- Watch this Ted Talk on how racism makes our economy worse — and not just in ways that harm people of color, says public policy expert Heather C. McGhee. From her research and travels across the US, McGhee shares startling insights into how racism fuels bad policymaking and drains our economic potential — and offers a crucial rethink on what we can do to create a more prosperous nation for all. “Our fates are linked,” she says. “It costs us so much to remain divided.”
Podcasts
NPR’s Codeswitch discusses the legacy of Martin Luther King in this Podcast talks with Hajar Yazdiha about her new book “The Struggle For The People’s King: How Politics Transforms The Memory Of The Civil Rights Movement” is really about how the co-optation of Martin Luther King Jr.